Many vehicles today have hundreds of circuits, sensors and other electronic components. A network is provided in a vehicle in order for these circuits, sensors and other electronic components to communicate with each other. The network may use vehicle-area-network (VAN), Automobile Bitserielle Schnittstelle (ABUS), controller-area networking (CAN), J1850 and other communication protocol standards. In diagnosing vehicles, standard communication protocols are used to communicate data to and from a scan tool. The scan tool is a device that collects and interprets data, such as diagnostic data, being received from an ECU (electronic control unit) on the vehicle and displays the data to the operator in a useful format, such as in a graphical format.
CAN is a serial communication bus used to relay data from various modules that control a variety of functions on the vehicle, such as air-conditioner systems, door locks and windows, ABS controls and other functions. CAN is the leading network protocol being used in modern vehicles today from companies, such as Ford, Daimler-Chrysler and General Motors. Unfortunately, some existing scan tools can not be utilized with vehicles using CAN because they do not have the proper hardware or software to support that protocol. Thus, garages that have many of these non-CAN capable scan tools would not be able to utilize them on vehicles equipped with CAN and therefore, must invest in newer scan tools that can communicate with CAN. These garages invested great amounts of money to purchase their scan tools and it would be beneficial for the garages to be able to use their existing scan tools to communicate with vehicles that use CAN.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a method and an apparatus so that an existing or to be developed scan tools can communicate with vehicles equipped with CAN.